


a close thing

by karanguni



Series: Nasdack [11]
Category: FFVII, FFXII
Genre: Comfort, Multi, Stockmarket AU, prompt-fic, real world AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-17
Updated: 2009-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-15 04:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the prompt: Balthier/Rufus/Tseng, inversion of roles/ceremony.  "Love came in accordance with what he promised, and not only out of gratitude."</p>
            </blockquote>





	a close thing

Children are laughing on the street, running past and through the weave of parked cars outside of Tseng's apartment block, their canvas shoes hitting tar and then pavement, tar and then pavement. It's drizzling. Grey clouds shadow skyscrapers, throw heavy, overcast images over glass and metal until the sun boils behind the cumulonimbus towers and hides. Droplets fall, splattering light but persistent. Tseng thinks about this world of his, wondering idly and without purpose if New York City really is just a snowglobe, taken and shaken by the hand of God. He stands on the sidewalk with his hands tucked neatly into his pockets, his fingers loose and his mind easily blank.

His hair is getting wet. Tseng closes his eyes for a moment. He breathes in. The cacophony of things around him rises to a comforting, deafening roar. The tap of heels, a woman walking past. Umbrellas blossoming. Cars, honking. He can smell exhaust. Hear the wheels turning. Bicycles. People on the phone, their voices rising, each language a new tangle in the already-crowded air. It takes a while for the rain to drum it all down and into submission. Tseng turns his face to the sky.

'What in god's name,' Tseng hears Balthier curse as the man comes out from the stairwell. He doesn't turn around. 'I leave you alone and you do this. An umbrella too expensive an investment for you? Get in the damned car; you're soaked. What will his highness think?'

Tseng hears Balthier reach for his car keys. Cracking open an eye, he says, 'When have you ever cared what Rufus thinks?'

Balthier, an arm raised above his head to shield himself from the downpour, looks at Tseng. 'I don't,' he says. 'Even though he pays my bills. It's just easier, man, to stop him from throwing a fit than to endure his whinging about how I treat his favourite chew-toy.'

Tseng arches his eyebrow, and curls his lips up into a smile. 'Would that be you, or me?'

Balthier straightens himself, his car keys held loosely in his hand. 'Are you standing in the rain just so you can be coy?'

'Perhaps,' Tseng says, evenly.

'You'll make a scene,' Balthier points out. 'Doesn't that go against your love for privacy and secrecy?'

'I'm the commoner in this relationship,' Tseng shrugs, taking a step closer. He puts on hand on the flat of Balthier's stomach, the fabric beneath his fingers going damp and translucent. 'No one watches my actions, or cares who I fuck in which hotels.' A look shared. 'Making a scene, as you say, is my prerogative.'

In front of the park, the children, the car and everyone, Tseng pulls Balthier's head down, and kisses him, lips wet and tongue as well.

-

Balthier manages not to fuck him in the leather backseat, but it's a close thing. By the time they make it to Rufus' penthouse, they're dripping all over the floor and onto Rufus' rugs and carpeting. The storm's risen to a low howl outside the windows.

Tseng doesn't offer any explanation when Rufus looks at him in askance. 'I'm sorry we're late,' he says instead.

'No issue,' Rufus replies, eyeing them both. He gestures with one hand towards the dining table. 'It's not as though I wasted the effort to do much more than call in some dinner.'

Balthier's busy wringing his shirt over Rufus' Italian designer furniture. 'Take-out?'

'In a manner of speaking,' Rufus says in the neutral voice of a man whose take-out cost upwards of a hundred dollars. 'Where have the two of you been?'

'On a romp.' Balthier stretches out, bare-chested, on the sofa. His words are light, but there's a brightness in his eyes. 'Tseng's feeling a little bizarre.'

'Bizarre?' Rufus reaches out to touch Tseng's wet hair.

Balthier's reply is a hum, deep at the back of his throat, as he sits up to watch Tseng catch Rufus' hand. 'Mmmhmm.' He doesn't say anything when Tseng slides, with slow grace, to his knees, nor does he make any comment when Tseng gently pulls the length of Rufus' belt from about his hips, and he does not speak when Tseng bends his head to kiss the skin at the base of Rufus' stomach, doesn't smirk when Rufus flinches from that touch, and doesn't look away from Rufus' blue, blue eyes when they catch each other's gaze and refuse to look away even as Rufus' fingers go white on Tseng's shoulder and his breath goes broken on a moan.

Tseng stays there on the floor with his forehead against the arch of Rufus' hipbone, his fingers tracing the hollow falls and gentle rise of Rufus' skin, silent, breathing, listening.

-

That night they put Tseng in the centre as they never usually do, as he never tends to allow; they fuck him so, so gently. Tseng falls asleep last, with Rufus' breath moist on his neck, and Balthier's lips warm on the dip of his clavicle.

He wakes up to kiss their fingers, metal cool against his tongue, watching their faces in the sunlight of a morning after a weathering storm.


End file.
